Collegiate head football coach, William Guy Mallory, born May 30, 1935, in Sandusky, OH, died last week, the result of a recent fall in his Bloomington, IN home.

A 1957 graduate of Miami of Ohio, Mallory was a standout offensive and defensive end, who played for Hall of Fame football coach Ara Parseghian as well as John Pont.

He started his coaching career at Bowling Green in 1960. Five seasons later, fellow Miami of Ohio alum, and new head coach at Yale, Carm Cozza, invited Mallory to join him as a defensive coordinator and he accepted. After a year at Yale, he joined Woody Hayes as an assistant defensive coach at Ohio State where he remained for three years before returning to his alma mater, where at the age of 33, he became the school's head football coach.

After four 7-3 seasons, in 1973, he led Miami of Ohio to an 11-0 record. Later that year, he moved to Boulder, CO as head coach at the University of Colorado where he remained for the next four years, compiling a record of 35-21-1. In 1980, Mallory became the head football coach Northern Illinois University. During four seasons at NIU his record was 25-19.

When the peripatetic coach accepted Indiana University's head football coaching job in 1984, he promised his wife, Ellie, it would be their last move, and he was true to his word. After thirteen seasons at Indiana, where he became the school's winningest coach accumulating 69 wins, 77 losses, and 4 ties, he remained in Bloomington, becoming an iconic figure in the community.

Mallory's year in 1965, as assistant defensive coach at Yale, was the impetus for my contacting him more than four decades later. The purpose of my call was to request that he reflect on his year at Yale and his memories of a Yale linebacker, Bill Hilgendorf "Hilgy," that I might incorporate in a book I'm writing about Bill, a childhood friend, who at Yale was class secretary (president) his senior year, an All-Ivy linebacker, and weeks after graduating in 1967, fell to his death while hiking in the mountains above Hong Kong.

Coach Mallory could not have been more cordial or more effusive in this praise of Bill and his Yale teammates.

"I coordinated the defense the year that I was at Yale. There were two of us that directed the defense, Bill Narduzzi, my secondary coach and me. I had the front, what I call the "force" unit, the linebackers and the down players.

"I certainly remember Bill. I was blessed to coach a lot of quality young men and Bill was one of the best. He was an individual who took a great deal of pride in what he did, whether on the football field or in the classroom. Bill was what you like to see in a student athlete. He was a total person. Sometimes today we get caught up with the "me" factor. It was no "me" factor with Bill. He was what I call the "we person" – a team person. He cared about his teammates and doing everything in his power to make us as successful as possible. The hub of a quality individual is attitude and Bill had that. He was also what I call an attitude person. He was a winner. You knew he was going to go on and succeed.

At Yale, there are great demands on the students academically. I had such great respect – not that they don't have it at other universities, too. In the Ivy League particularly, there are great academic demands placed on a football player, coupled with that, we coaches were highly demanding. We wanted to see them to strive and succeed athletically, too. Bill and his fellow ballplayers were required to maintain a rigorous schedule.

"I have just such great respect for Bill and all the ballplayers I worked with at Yale. They weren't there on scholarship. They didn't have to play. What I respected most was the great passion that Bill possessed on and off the field. Bill was the kind of person you were glad to have the opportunity to coach. He was the perfect example of who you wanted in your program and on your team. I have a gut feel about people, and my gut feeling about Bill was he possessed it all: he was a total individual. He was very dedicated and prideful, who wanted to excel, wanted to succeed and knew that he would go on an excel after he left Yale.

"Bill could have played and met with great success at any program in the nation because he was such a forced, hard-nosed, get-after-the-guy player. Equally impressive, he wasn't one of those mouthy guys. He went about playing the game demonstrating his talent on the field, not with his mouth. Bill, like most of the Yale players was there because of his great love of and passion for the game. He and his teammates had to have that passion for all the time they had to put into the program. The demands on the ballplayers at Yale were no different than those we placed on the players at Ohio State, Colorado, Indiana, or any place where I coached.

"The academic burdens placed on the boys at Yale were fierce. At times they would come to practice after staying up all night studying. I got on my safety one time because he missed some calls, and that was not like him. I pulled him aside and said, "You weren't concentrating. It's so important you make the right calls." He responded, "Coach, I haven't had any sleep for two nights." I thought, holy cow, if it were me, I'm not sure I could have even made it to practice. But, that was the way they were. So, dedicated and committed to the game, coupled with an equal commitment to academics. That was the big difference I saw at Yale.

"Not that the other schools weren't strong on academics. Woody was a great mentor. My first football head-coaching job was at Miami, where I followed Bo Schembechler, who went to the University of Michigan. When I shared the news with Woody, he was very supportive and gave me advice I'll never forget. 'Remember,' he told me, 'what's first and foremost in a football program is education. You need to make clear to your players that their job at schools isn't just to play football. No, you're not there to develop athletic bums. You're there to develop young men who after they leave your program are going to go out and be successful in the so-called real world.' That's how he structured his program and that's how I structured mine. That attitude was prevalent at Yale, and I demanded that attitude everywhere I coached following my time at Yale."

Learning of Coach Mallory's passing, I emailed a fellow Yale teammate of Bill's, who played defensive end, Jim Saxon. Within hours, Jim responded with an eloquent eulogy for his defensive coach.

"Although Bill Mallory served only a year at Yale, he made a huge impact on me and no doubt the others who played defense. He was the hardest man I ever met, or at least he seemed that way.

"During one impassioned moment on the sideline, he actually foamed at the mouth.

"As a sophomore, I was a defensive end on the JV team. The football magazine, Street & Smith, mentioned me as a "promising" sophomore.

"The following spring, Mallory came to Yale as the defensive coordinator. He scheduled an agility outing with every player he thought might be a defensive starter. I met him one-on-one on the rooftop of Payne-Whitney Gym where he conducted drills. He ran me so hard I sat down and threw up. Watching me, he almost did, too!

"When fall came, my name was listed on the top line of the depth chart. However, I proceeded to do something really stupid on the first day of practice: I ditched my forearm pads in the expectation of toughening up my forearms so I wouldn't need to pad them during games. Big mistake. After one practice session where I banged helmets and shoulder pads as if wearing pads, my forearms were so sore, I couldn't bear to hit anyone for the next three or four days. Consequently, I spent most of the time backing up against blockers instead of banging them in the head and tossing them aside, which was my normal modus operandi.

"By the end of preseason, I was on Mallory's shit list. In the first half of the first game, the guy who replaced me broke his ankle. Mallory looked down the bench for a replacement. He looked at me and I thought he was about to call my name.

"Instead, he called the guy next to me, who lasted one set of downs. Again, Mallory called the next kid sitting next to me. He was even worse. Finally, Mallory came over to me and growled in my face, "Saxon, get in there and contain that quarterback. If he rolls out around you, I'll take you out and you won't play again." I went in and on the first series, the quarterback rolled out to my side and, although I didn't make a tackle, I ran parallel with him until he had to throw the ball away. A couple of plays later, he tried me again for no gain.

"After his team punted, I went to the sideline where Mallory came up to me and began banging his hands on my shoulder pads with all his might. My roommates up in the stands, and as I found out later, and other spectators, thought he was upset with me. What he screamed at me while beating on my shoulders was, "Now that's contain!" From then on, I was in the starting lineup.

"What he brought to Yale was a hardline Alabama-type coaching attitude that the Ivy League had never seen. His appreciation of his year at Yale surprised me. I had no idea he held his players in such esteem.

"Bill Mallory, one of the most influential individuals in my life."

It's not difficult to imagine a legion of Coach Mallory's players over the decades sustaining a similar sentiment.

-- Todd Tarbox

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